Fast and effective communication is the key to minimizing confusion, anxiety, and casualties both during and after a public health emergency. The ability of emergency services personnel to relay clear instructions, particularly to vulnerable populations, results in better understanding of the situation by the population and faster compliance with these instructions. As America's population ages, the number of people in senior living communities is growing rapidly. Nearly all of these communities have some sort of emergency communications systems to satisfy regulatory requirements, reduce risk of lawsuits, or enhance the marketing value of their services. However, systems that provide factual communications in the opposite direction, from staff to residents in case of a public health emergency, are almost unknown. As a result, residents in outlying cottages or apartments often have no way of being notified in case of an emergency, other than alarms or simply having staff run from door to door. Touchtown, already an established leader in lifestyle communications for this industry, is now developing an innovative approach to safety communications that will significantly reduce the cost of such systems, and dramatically improve the reliability and precision of information delivery during a public health emergency. The specific aim of the proposed Phase I research program is to develop a suite of small personal communication units tied together into a single self-organizing, self-optimizing and self-healing mesh network that can provide two-way emergency and personal communications between residents and staff. The end result of Phase I will be a complete working system that will handle the spectrum of staff-to-resident and resident-to-staff communication, notifying family members of emergency events via email and text messages, and keeping family updated on resident status via a secure website. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Fast and effective communication is the key to minimizing confusion, anxiety, and casualties both during and after a public health emergency. The Touchtown Companion system is an innovative approach to safety communications that will significantly reduce the cost of such systems, and dramatically improve the reliability and precision of information delivery during a public health emergency, resulting in better understanding of instructions, fewer injuries and deaths due to lack of information, and reduction in operators'operating costs and financial risk.